Chapter 24 #2
Reid watches me eat. His own cup sits in the cupholder — vanilla, barely touched. He keeps glancing at it and then back at me, like he forgot it exists.
"Stop watching me eat. It's weird."
"I'm not watching you eat. I'm monitoring your chocolate intake for medical purposes."
"Oh, is that what they teach you in EMT school?"
"Advanced module. Emotional Triage via Dairy Products. I got the highest score in my class."
I almost smile. Almost.
He drops the bit. "Is it helping? The dairy product triage?"
I actually think about it before answering.
My eyes are still swollen, and when I let myself remember that husband's face — the way he just stood there, waiting like he already knew — something behind my ribs flinches.
But it's not the same sharp, can't-breathe thing from before. More like a bruise I can move around.
"Yeah," I say. "It actually is."
"Good."
That's it. No follow-up. No "want to talk about it?" No armchair psychology about why two scoops of chocolate ice cream can do what rational thought can't. He just sits there in the blue-green glow of the dashboard, one hand loose on the steering wheel, and lets me have the quiet.
"You know what this feels like," I say quietly. "Losing someone."
Reid's jaw tightens. Just slightly. "Yeah."
"How do you do it? Keep showing up?"
He's quiet for a long moment. Outside, someone walks past the truck, bundled against the cold, breath making clouds. March isn't supposed to be this cold.
"I think about the ones I saved," he says finally. "Not to cancel it out. You can't cancel it out. But to remind myself that showing up matters, even when it doesn't work."
I nod slowly. Scrape the bottom of my cup.
"Blake would get it too," I say. And it's not a thought I planned — it just surfaces, natural and true. "I keep thinking... if he were here right now, I wouldn't have to explain any of this to him either. He's seen things. Done things."
Something flickers through me — not just missing Blake's understanding, but missing him. The weight of his arm. The solid wall of his chest.
I catch the thought and file it away. Which is a fun thing to do while I'm literally wrapped in Reid's blanket like some kind of emotional freeloader.
Reid doesn't tense at Blake's name. A few weeks ago, he might have. Now he just nods.
"You could call him," Reid says. "He'd want to know you had a rough day."
"I know." I set my empty cup aside. "But I'm here with you. This is our night."
"Laine." Reid turns to face me, one arm draped over the steering wheel. "That's not how this works. You don't have to compartmentalize us."
"I'm not —"
"You are." His voice is gentle but firm.
"You're worried about giving me enough attention.
Making sure Blake doesn't feel left out.
Managing everyone's feelings." He reaches over, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
"You're allowed to just feel things. Even messy things.
Even things about him while you're sitting here with me. "
I open my mouth. Close it. Because what am I supposed to say to that? "What if I feel too many things at once?"
"Then you feel too many things at once." He shrugs like it's the simplest thing in the world. "We'll figure it out."
I stare at him. At his steady eyes and his patient mouth and the way he's looking at me like I'm not broken. Like I'm just having a hard day and that's okay and he's going to sit in this freezing truck eating mediocre vanilla ice cream for as long as I need him to.
"How are you so calm about this?"
"About what?"
"All of it. Me crying in a batting cage. Me talking about Blake while we're on a date. This whole... situation."
Reid laughs softly. "I'm not calm. I'm terrified half the time."
"You don't look terrified."
"I've had practice hiding it." He shifts closer, the blanket bunching between us. "But I'd rather be terrified with you than comfortable without you."
I lean across the console and kiss him.
Not a peck. Not a careful, testing-the-waters brush of lips that I could play off as friendly.
No. I kiss him like I mean it. Because I do.
He tastes like vanilla ice cream and cold air. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek, and the gentleness of it almost undoes me more than the kiss itself.
It starts soft. Careful. Then his other hand slides into my hair sending tingles down my neck and suddenly soft isn't enough.
I'm climbing over the console before I've decided to.
Blanket tangled around my legs, knee hitting the gear shift — graceful, really graceful — and then Reid pulls me onto his lap and oh.
His hands slide under my sweatshirt, warm against my skin, and every coherent thought I have just dissolves.
Every single one. Gone. Didn't even wave goodbye.
For a second — just a flash — I think about Blake. The way he kissed me against my apartment door. And in the cab of his truck, and in the doorway of a restaurant. Every date I get more and more of him, learning how he feels.
This is different. Reid kisses like he's memorizing something. Savoring. Every touch deliberate and warm. And he's so familiar.
Feelings are weird.
Reid's mouth trails down my neck and I gasp, fingers digging into his shoulders like they've got their own agenda. The windows are completely fogged now. We're invisible in here — just us, the cold pressing in from every direction, and whatever heat we're generating between us.
"Laine." His voice is rough. He pulls back, breathing hard, and his eyes flick to the fogged passenger window, then toward the parking lot we can't even see anymore. "We should probably..."
"Yeah." I'm just as breathless. "Probably."
Neither of us moves.
Then Reid laughs — low and warm and a little bit wrecked — and pulls me against his chest instead. I tuck my head under his chin, legs stretched into the passenger seat. The blanket settles over both of us like it was waiting for us to figure this out.
"This okay?" he murmurs into my hair.
"Yeah." I close my eyes. His heartbeat is right there under my ear, steady and real. The heater rattles against the cold like it's losing the fight but refusing to quit. "This is good."
We stay like that for a long time. Two people in a fogged-up truck behind an ice cream shop, wrapped in a wool blanket that smells like sawdust and dog. I don't ask about the dog.
The world goes on outside without us. I can hear it — a car door somewhere, the muffled thump of a dumpster lid, somebody's music leaking out of a rolled-down window. None of it touches us.
My whole body still aches from it. I'll still see that husband's face when I close my eyes tonight. Tomorrow I'll pull on the scrubs and walk back in and do it all again, because that's what you do. You just do it again.
But right now, Reid's heartbeat is steady under my ear. And somewhere across town, Blake is probably in his workshop, sanding something beautiful out of something broken.
And both of them are mine.
I don't know what to do with that yet. But I'm starting to think I don't have to figure it out tonight.